Three fine books to read this week

India Today

03-07-2025

(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated July 7, 2025)The Diamond-Eencrusted Rat Trap: Writings From Bombay by Adil JussawallaSpeaking Tiger | Rs 499 | 160 pages
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There are many things that The Diamond-Encrusted Rat Trap does not do. It does not tell a comprehensive story of Mumbai. It does not pretend to capture the soul of the city, or even to understand its moods and mysteries.This slim and occasionally eccentric volume—made up of a collection of Adil Jussawalla's prose pieces about Bombay-Mumbai—does something else altogether. It records the fleeting moments that add both beauty and horror to our city. In it, we encounter a city that 'smells of the powder on the carrom board' and reverberates with the 'sledgehammers of demolition crews'. Where life often involves moving through a 'box within box above box out of box inside box'.'The pieces gathered here do not attempt to understand Mumbai-Bombay...,' writes Jerry Pinto in his Introduction. 'They are a way of giving witness to the bigness and the strangeness of the city. His city is built of chance encounters, of laughing liftmen, of departed friends and other ghosts.' Jussawalla has shared a complex relationship with Mumbai. He left Bombay for London in 1957, seeking somewhere grander than the grey, peeling city of his birth. Thirteen years later, he returned to this place of stray dogs and Gokulashtami pot-breakers. After which he stayed on to write poetry, edit newspapers and magazines and observe his city by the sea.advertisementJussawalla writes about the annual exodus when the city's cobblers and fruit sellers and Mafco stall assistants pack up and leave for their 'native places'; about the change of light after men on a scaffolding hang up a jute curtain outside his window; about the drummers who are part of the Ganpati processions and who seem to 'erupt out of the earth just to take part in the celebrations, and to sink back into the earth once the celebrations are over'.This is like a lucky dip: you never know what you will come up with. Some pieces can feel dated and random. But others remain fresh, funny and a reminder that some things—like the disappearing waiters of posh clubs or the 'De daan, de daan' cry after an eclipse—are here to stay.—Shabnam MinwallaA Stranger In Three Worlds by Aubrey MenenSpeaking Tiger | Rs 499 | 280 pages
Aubrey Menen was born in England in 1912 to an Irish mother and an Indian father, a doctor—and brought up as an Englishman. The mixed upbringing makes him a stranger in three cultures, or the very opposite—an insider-outsider, which lends a unique flavour to hiswriting: a sage-like perspicacity and playful literary acuity mark every sentence. This edition is a two-in-one boombox—Dead Man in the Silver Market (1953) and Space Within the Heart (1970)—that jolts the reader awake.The autobiographical essays here are classics of the genre. In 'My Grandmother and the Dirty English', we meet his maternal grandmother who considers herself superior to the British in all aspects: bathing ritual, food habits, even furniture: 'she disliked chairs and thought them vulgar.' In 'The Dead Man in the Silver Market', the author witnesses an Indian protester being shot dead in Chandni Chowk; later, he dines with a soldier—'from an industrial slum near Liverpool'—who 'had been in the party that had done the shooting.'In the second book, Menen reads the Upanishads after the death of his parents. The titular space within the heart, the void inside the onion, is 'only an empty space to be used as a post for observation'. Menen writes about sex and the spirit, the Gita, Rigveda, Descartes and the Bloomsbury set with wicked humour and in tone-perfect prose. The writing voice is involved yet maintains an arm's distance—it's both participant and observer. 'The best way to stop thinking about yourself is to talk about yourself, and that is why so many people do it...When you know yourself for what you are—or what the world has made of you—you prefer to shut up about it.'advertisement—Palash Krishna MehrotraUnmyth: Works and Worlds of Mithu Sen, Edited by Irina AristarkhovaMapin | Rs 3,500 | 364 pages
Is it possible for an artist monograph to feel like a live art performance? Capturing the essence of Mithu Sen's work— installations, moving images, sculptures, word art, performances, and drawings—over two decades, Unmyth: Works and Worlds of Mithu Sen is as untameable as her practice itself.It's also in line with Sen's ethos behind 'Unlanguage,' a creation where she uses nonsensical phrases and incorrect syntax as an act of dismantling the conventional rules of language. The first comprehensive study of the artist's wide-ranging oeuvre, Unmyth is thoughtfully edited by scholar-writer Irina Aristarkhova and innovatively designed by Anusha Yadav. Along with being an archive, the intention is to underline the individuality of Sen's practice, which provokes us to envision new worlds built around negotiating ideas of lingual anarchy, mything, 'un'mything and postmything, radical hospitality, 'un'taboo sexuality, and 'un'monolith identity. It is what Sen describes as 'a testament to 25 years of love and playbour (play + labour).'advertisementThere are QR codes inserted within the book which when scanned reveal work that unfolds in real time.The book also features contributions from curators, academics, and critics who have engaged with Sen's work over the years. Yet, the book's breathless centrepiece is the 'Fictional Interview' by Sen herself. The questions asked resemble some of the inquiries posed at her practice over the years. But in form and scope, they replicate the playful provocation that makes Mithu Sen truly singular.—Poulomi DasSubscribe to India Today Magazine- Ends